MSSU athlete involved in Baylor lawsuit

A Missouri Southern State University football player is accused of assault in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by his former girlfriend against Baylor University.

Missouri Southern State University running back Devin Chafin played three years at Baylor University before beginning his football career at MSSU. In those years at Baylor, Chafin allegedly became involved in a romantic relationship with a fellow student, Dolores Lozano.

In the court documents, Lozano describes three physical assaults in the spring of 2014 at the hands of Chafin, resulting in bruises and forcing Lozano to seek medical attention. Lozano is suing Baylor University on the grounds of Title IX, claiming school officials had adequate knowledge of the assaults and elected to not take action.

Chafin and Lozano began a relationship in 2012. In March of 2014, Lozano claims she was "slapped, kicked and slammed" by Chafin against a wall until she fell to the ground, then strangled "until she began to lose consciousness". The first assault was made aware to Jeff Lebby, Baylor's Football Running Back Coach shortly after its occurrence, according to court documents. Lebby allegedly told Lozano that he "would speak to Chafin about the incident" however Lozano alleges no reasonable action was taken and no report was filed regarding the incident.

At the time, Lozano was serving as a manager of the Acrobatics and Tumbling team. Her supervisor was made aware of Lozano's visible and apparent bruises, who then reported the assault to the Associate Athletics Director. No further action was taken.

A second assault allegedly occurred in the early hours of April 5, 2014 where Chafin allegedly slammed Lozano's arm against a vehicle in front of several of Lozano's friends. Lozano claims to have gone to the on-campus clinic to address the injury which required further medical examination. Other than that, Lozano alleges no further action was taken by any authority.

Lozano claims to have filed an incident report with Waco Police Department on April 11 of 2014 but she claims her calls went unreturned.

Later in April 2014, the third assault occurred when Chafin "forcibly and aggressively grabbed" Lozano and "slammed her to the ground."

Lozano is suing Baylor University on the grounds of Title IX, stating in documents that Baylor "failed to conduct prompt, equitable, adequate and reliable investigations" and that the University "failed to take action to identify and eliminate a potential hostile environment" and that "University administrators directly discouraged complaints from reporting or participating in student conduct processes" among other things.

We reached out to Chafin but have not heard back yet. Additionally, we reached out to Baylor University and Lozano's attorney.

A statement by MSSU says, "Missouri Southern State University is governed by federal laws concerning the release of student information. The University is aware of recent news reports concerning one of its students. The situation will be monitored and the University will follow its applicable policies."

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